Where Translink gets its money from.

Bula’s got another great article today. She’s digging into why Translink’s had a rocky relationship with the province for almost its entire life. One point is that the Liberals opposed it when the NDP created it, and they haven’t exactly warmed up to it since then. But there’s a better explanation.

“The problem for TransLink is that while it is an innovative structure and it got the revenue tools, it never got the revenue streams,” says Pat Jacobsen, the former Ontario deputy transportation minister who was TransLink’s CEO for seven of its 10 years. “It’s the only authority I know of that has to fund 100 per cent of its bus capital, 50 to 70 per cent of its rapid-transit capital and all of its operating costs from local sources.”

The bill ends up being paid disproportionately by property taxes.

Translink gets less money from non-local revenue streams–like, say, the province–than other regional transit authorities. Easy to see the problem there.